Born Backwards
by LaceyKoi
Summary: don't own The Once and Future King either. do we notice a pattern yet? POV, you get to pick whose!!! yeah!!! no yaoi. no yaoi? what's wrong with me?! must write yaoi!!!!


We were born backwards.  
  
I guess that really doesn't make much sense unless you've read The Once and Future King, but there's where it was put best. We were born backwards.  
  
If you haven't read it, I guess I'll have to explain now. Everybody knows the story of King Arthur, the sword in the stone, and then you add in Guinevere, right? You are so wrong. The story had started before Arthur (previously Wart) was even born. The king desired the wife of another king, and during a battle he breached the castle keep (I love that phrase) and raped the woman. Arthur was the result. Arthur ended up being the king's only child, and he truly was heir to the throne without the sword, although he was illegitimate. After he pulled the sword, Excalibur, from the stone and became king, a sister he had never known came to see him. Morgan was beautiful, had children of her own, and was she ever wicked! The witch slept with her own brother, and ended up having his child. She was bitter because his father killed her father to get to their mother. And then Arthur married Lady Guinevere, and she fell in love with Lancelot, and Lancelot ended up sleeping with another woman, and she ended up pregnant, so there was talk of marriage, but before I finished it, I lost the book in a rushed move.  
  
Entwined throughout the story is Merlin, the magician. There are stories all over about this one character, but I read in the book about how he was born backwards. This is how he explained it: Most people are born young and grow old. He was born old and would grow young. So he was born backwards.  
  
We were born backwards, all five of us. That may be the one thing besides the Gundams that binds us all together. Between us five, we have been married, held fortunes, lived without names that are so needed, watched everyone die around us, and been used as an experiment. We have been raped as many times, more, as most people twice our age and married have made love. We have risked our lives for the world, held our ground when staying could mean certain death, and saved lives of comrades more often than any hundred people should have. We hold on for tomorrow, when we know full well that for us, for any person who lives like us, there should _be_ no tomorrow.  
  
We have been old before our times. We have fought in a war that should not have been, at ages that should not have been allowed, with abilities that should not exist. We have seen the future, and it's just like the forgotten past. And it shall be repeated tomorrow, and the tomorrow after, and till there is a bright explosion that lights up the sky and kills the most evolved form of mankind that still inhabits Earth.  
  
This is a war created by those older than us to prove to those older than them that war has no place among us. Yet we are the ones fighting it. We are the ones fighting to save a world whose inhabitants seem hell-bent on destroying it. They say that instead of fighting the enemy, we are fighting the war. Yet fighting the war or the enemy doesn't matter to us. It doesn't matter to people that it's killed, families that never had a real chance to be.  
  
We were born backwards, with knowledge that no one our age should ever need. Merlin had everything to tell his age, the looks as well as the mind. The five of us just have the mind. We may never survive, so we live every day as if it were our last, live every breath for those without it, and for those without it we fight.  
  
Some people have been born into the wrong times. Some people should have been born into the medieval era, the pioneer era of America, the Chinese era of enlightenment, any time was better built to be home to some living now. We could have lived forever, but instead, between us, shared amongst us, is the knowledge since the dawn of time. We have the history of thousands of years, just belonging to us. For all we know, we may be the last to remember it all.  
  
Being born backwards, we never should have really lived. If we had been born just a few years earlier, we could have told them about the dangers of war. Instead, we are young enough to have to live them. "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." If only. We remember the past, but we still repeat it. We live it every day, while knowing the statistics from wars long ago. We know how many wounded, how many dead, how many _everything_ happened in every war, in each separate _battle_ of every war. Each statistic stands out fresh in our minds. But what we know best? Current statistics. We could tell you exactly how many have died of Gundam fatalities. If any one of you lived our lives, you would have cried. We will cry for this. But right now, we are too old.  
  
War has an effect on everybody. But we are victims. We are teenagers, we are the old men telling war stories, but we have to live this war. We have to fight this war. Some day you will know our story. Some believe we were forced to grow up too fast. It's a lie. We are older than those saying it. We have to live for a day that may never come, and fight for that day. That day is but one in many lives we have and shall ruin. It is but one to those orchestrating the war. It is but one day to us, but it is _everything_ to us. It is what we live for, and what we take the risk of dying for. It is the day that everybody sees. It is the day that people see war for what it is--a string of meaningless deaths. That may even be the day we cry for the first time. But right now…we are too old to cry.  
  
If you were asked to look at us, you would see the young faces. It's what everybody sees. Those same young faces hide the truth of the war, the truth of every war that has ever been fought. Every war fought was fought for you.  
  
As we were born backwards, we were born old, without any knowledge of our true ages, so we tell you have long we have been alive. We have lived through the adversity of war, and we will continue living for that _one_ _day_. We wish only to live to this day. Maybe that day will be tomorrow. Then we will wait for another day in the next tomorrow. Maybe we will cry tomorrow.  
  
We were born backwards. Don't cry for us, we will someday cry for ourselves.  
  
We were born backwards. We grow younger everyday. We will someday cry. But what I really want to know is…  
  
If we were born backwards…  
  
Are we ever going to have a childhood? Because that's where you learn to cry. But I'm sure that first we must share our knowledge with the world. When we appear old and gray… after all the wars are over…will we finally be young enough to cry?  
  
We were, after all, born backwards. Will we even remember what we are supposed to cry for anymore? Because when we are young, we are old. But when we are old, does that make us young? And will we remember everything we knew now? Because when you are young you see the war through the eyes of a spectator. But when you are old, you see it through the eyes of a participant. When we are young enough to cry, will we? Or will we forget all the people dead in the past, and all those we have killed?  
  
Being born backwards, I wonder a few things more: Will we ever be young enough to have a childhood? Will we cry for the childhood we never had? And will we ever cry? Maybe by the time we learn, it will be too late to cry anymore…or maybe we will cry on our old comrades' shoulders for those lost tears. The tears we are losing now. And we will make up for lost time.  
  
We were, after all, born backwards. 


End file.
